Five: The Later History of "Coram"

This article is based on research undertaken on behalf of the
Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square, London, prior to its
opening in June 2004. Many thanks to the Museum for involving me then,
and for answering my more recent questions. Image capture and
photographs by the author. [You may use these photographs without
prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as
you (1) credit the source/photographer and (2) link your document to
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This bust of Thomas Coram, by the sculptor David Evans
(1893-1959), presides over the doorway of the Foundling Museum at 40,
Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ. It dates from 1937 (see Weinreb et
al. 869).

In his last years, Thomas Coram would visit the London
Foundling Hospital, standing as godfather to some of the new babies.
He was also remembered for distributing gingerbread to "his" boys and
girls there. Hogarth's wonderful portrait of him
continued to hang in the Hospital's dining hall, "and many of the
children thought of him as their father" (Wagner 196). But by the time
he died he had had nothing to do with the running of the institution
for almost ten years, having been excluded from its administration
early on, for speaking out against mismanagement and irregularities.
This seems to have been typical of the bluff and forthright seaman. He
had continued to busy himself with worthy causes, trying in particular
to get another Foundling Hospital built. But, as it says on his
memorial stone, he had been "little attentive to his Private Fortune,"
and was "poor in Worldly Estate." As one biographer puts it baldly:
"Wealth at death: next to none" (Taylor). Nevertheless, when he died
in 1751 at the ripe old age of 84, he left behind him something much
more valuable than money.

First, there was the Hospital itself. This continued to take in
children on the original site until 1926. By then, however, the grand
old building was surrounded by roads and other buildings instead of
fields, and the busy railway stations nearby had brought more
pollution. The governors at last acted on William Acton's complaint
of 1859, that the children were being "unnecessarily reared in the
atmosphere of the metropolis" (505). They moved the children further
out of London, first to Redhill in Surrey, then to a fine new building
at Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire. This was the last home of the
Foundling Hospital, which so many children had entered since that
first spring evening in 1741: the last admission number for 1901, the
last year of Queen Victoria's reign, was 22,752 (see the London
Metropolitan Archives' records). As an institution, it was closed down
completely in 1954. The remaining children either went back to their
birth mothers, or were fostered or adopted. The Berkhampsted building
was then used by Ashlyns School, with the older living accommodation
being converted to classrooms and laboratories.

Coram's memorial stone can still be found in the chapel at
Berkhamsted, but Coram himself was re-interred at the back of St
Andrew's Church, Holborn, in walking distance of the Hospital's
original site in Bloomsbury. His tomb chest, shown above, is in an
alcove between the west entrance vestibule and the nave. On the wall
in this area is a stone plaque from an older monument, with a carved
relief of putti faces; a small stone sculpture on the chest itself
shows another more realistic-looking putto rubbing his eyes, and on
the front of this otherwise simple chest are the heraldic motifs
designed for the Foundling Hospital by Handel: the compassionate Diana
of Ephesus and Britannia support a shield depicting an infant beneath
the night sky, with the Lamb of God above, and the simple motto "Help"
below (for these devices in another setting, see the beginning of Part
Three). Also in church are the font of 1804,
and mid-nineteenth-century pulpit, from the old school chapel, as well
as the "modest Kentish case" from the original organ donated to the
Hospital by Handel, possibly designed by the Hospital's architect,
Theodore Jacobsen (see Bradley and Pevsner 56). Nothing could be more
appropriate: the church later became the headquarters of the London College of
Organists, though this has since moved to Birmingham.

The Foundling Museum, in "a quiet neo-Georgian house of
1937 by J.M.Shepherd" (Cherry and Pevsner 269); in fact, the
architects were J. M. Sheppard & Partners, whose address around
this time was in Bedford Place, Bloomsbury ("Basic Biographical
Details"; see also "Ashlyns School Building").

Although the old building in London was demolished, some important
elements of it were carefully dismantled and preserved. These include
the original Court Room and the great oak staircase of the boys’ wing,
which have been reassembled in the present Foundling Museum. The
latter leads up to the first floor exhibits. In this way, something of
the original structure survives to this day. Many of the institution's
treasures also survive and have been gathered here too, such as the
copy of the Messiah that Handel left to the Hospital, and paintings by
Hogarth (including
the famous one of Coram himself) and other important artists.

Left: Plaque set into the pier of the old gateway,
explaining the historical background to Coram's Fields (enlarge to see
better). Right: Coram's Fields today.

More importantly, the Hospital's spirit lives on in the work of
what is now known simply as "Coram." Fortunately, there are no longer
huge throngs of "exposed and deserted children" on our streets, and no
one now wants to keep children in a big home, however warm-hearted
their carers might be, any more than they would want to send them off
abroad for doing something wrong, or simply to make room for more
children. Today, Coram has a campus just across from the Foundling
Museum, and runs many projects involving large numbers of children of
all ages, and several thousand families. Its methods have changed,
and, continuing on from the closure of the Hospital, it provides
adoption and foster services, as well as recreational and other
facilities. Although the time for institutionalizing children has
passed, in a very general sense, the charity's aim is what it has
always been — to support youngsters facing the challenges of
their times, so that they can find a place in society and make a
contribution to it. In the organization's own words: “We help young
people prepare for independence, manage their health, well being and
finances, and pursue educational and work opportunities." Of course
the assumption that those opportunities will be limited has now gone.
There are many brilliant success stories of twenty-first century
"Coram's children" who are really making the most of their adult
lives.

Most important of all is Thomas Coram's wider legacy. It is the
hardest to quantify, since it consists of the work of all those people
who followed his lead and formed other charitable organizations, which
have helped people right down the ages, and all over the world. Ruth
McClure puts it very well: "The Hospital's organizational form and
many of its fund-raising techniques were repeatedly imitated by its
successors, both in England and America, during the next two
centuries.... Every such institution is, in a sense, 'a child of this
Hospital'" (248).